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Thursday, February 05, 2009

Eggs, pesto and prosciutto...

I had planned on another dish for dinner, but after a fairly hectic day, I wasn't in the mood to do a lot of work to get it done. I have a separate pile of recipes that I keep handy when I need a dish that would be a snap to throw together and doesn't require many ingredients. I took advantage of that this evening and pulled out these Pesto and Prosciutto Egg Sandwiches to make instead.

The eggs for these sandwiches are poached - you can certainly feel free to choose whichever method you like to accomplish this, but we went a slightly simpler route this time. Instead of dropping the eggs right into barely simmering water (typically spiked with vinegar), we broke them into a ramekins and then lowered the ramekins down into the water to cook the eggs. This keeps the eggs neat, tidy and mimics the shape of the English muffins we used, making for a clean presentation.

Before we put the eggs on those lightly toasted muffins, we drizzled each with a prepared pesto (frozen from the batches we made this summer!) that we thinned with a touch of mild vegetable broth. Water would be acceptable here, but broth just adds more to the flavor base. For a salty component, we added a couple strips of thinly sliced prosciutto (don't skip this!) to the bottom of the sandwiches before gliding the eggs on top.

It was almost a shame to have to cover those beautiful just-set eggs with the muffin tops, but that alluring pesto concoction was reason enough. I do recommend not letting the English muffins get too crunchy when toasting - giving them just a light crispness, while still keeping them somewhat soft, will allow you not to worry about the eggs squishing out as you bite down. While pleasing enough for our dinner, I can easily see preparing these on a lazy Sunday morning for an outstanding way to start the day.